Keep the Faith

Your Savior’s Reflected in the Mirror

And for his next monthly installment,
He’s gonna go out with a bang!
Boy who always did what he was told…
Was promised to be king when he was old…


A paint brush stained a once pure canvas with color. Anger flowed with the bristles, yet contentment was the force that kept the handle in check. Black, gold, purple, and red splashed across the print, creating abstract images of war and peace.

He stood up after having sat in that wooden chair for hours, and stretched, glancing back at the unfinished piece of work as he did. He sighed, knowing it would have to be finished sometime soon and slowly walked towards the bathroom.

Closing the door, he stared at his reflection. A pitiful shell of a man looked right back at him. His hazel eyes were bloodshot and brimmed with tears from both lack of sleep and sadness. His body shook with coldness and agony. His black hair was long and greasy; it too appeared to have lost its life. His mind was broken into two.

He was but a ghost.

“Who did this to you?” the man in the mirror seemed to ask.

“Them…” replied the other, leaning against the counter.

“And who would ‘them’ be?” the Mirror Man smirked.

“My… my army,” he whispered, feeling his heart break now. “They… they’ve given up on me…”

A tear trickled down his cheek and fell into the sink. All of the rumors that had been scattered across the World Wide Web, along with those so called subtle hints given by the ones he had once trusted had made a rip in his army. Now soldiers were divided into groups. They were no longer whole.

And it was his fault apparently. It was all his fault.

The Mirror Man only shook his head. “You are their leader, are you not?”

The one leaning on the cold surface nodded, closing his eyes in an attempt to stop the crying.

“Then should they not have faith in their leader?”

“T-They should,” he stuttered. “But they don’t.”

“How do you know that for sure?”

“R-Rumors, hate mail, the g-glaring and whispers. I-I can h-hear them,” he mumbled. “I-I can h-hear it a-all.”

Flashbacks of the sinister laughing of fake teenagers spreading rumors through MySpace materialized before his eyes. His brother frowning at him from the living room, his laptop sitting in front of him blended in with the other pictures of deceit and the source of his pain. The prospect of his wife leaving him for someone else appeared. Her explanation of “I want somebody happy and not lied about all the time” rang through his ears.

These were his utter nightmares.

“Make them stop,” he wept in an undertone. “All the lies. God, please make them stop.”

“They can’t stop,” the Mirror Man said. “They won’t stop. They’ll always be there.”

“My army doesn’t want me,” he repeated.

“But do you want them?” the Mirror Man inquired softly, leaning on the barrier dividing reflection from human. “Do you?”

A silence enveloped the room, bloodshot hazel meeting bloodshot hazel as he looked up. He was only human. And humans could cry too. They could bleed. They could love and shiver and breathe and see too. He wasn’t a God on some pedestal like they made him out to be. He wasn’t their little play thing. He only had one choice of weaponry in his arsenal: words. Lyrics. But would they be of any use anymore if people thought of him as an unfit savior – a piece of shit?

Ever feel like you’ve been cheated
Following what they believe?
Don’t shake the hands of fate.
Don’t shake the hands of fate.


“I-I want them…”

“Then why not show that to them?”

“Because they would think it was some stupid gimmick; a falsehood.”

“Would it be?”

He shook his head and straightened to his habitual slouching stature. His body still shook like a leaf. His heart was bleeding, and the crimson plasma was now dripping down onto his ribs and discoloring the bones. His soul was tainted even more now. The crystalline tears still flowed, and the lights emphasized them more than ever.

“They should know the difference between a fabrication and the truth by now.”

“But they don’t.”

“Some do. You just have to keep your eyes peeled for them. They mix with the crowds quite easily.”

“How do you know though?”

“… I’m you.”

The shadow of a smile played on his dusty pink lips.

“They have to keep the faith. But so do you, hero,” the Mirror Man said. “Don’t teach them something that’s so blind that not even you believe it either.”

He nodded and turned off the lights. The word ‘hero’ echoed throughout his mind as he exited the bathroom, leaving the Mirror Man to fade away. Scooping up the paint brush from beside the incomplete piece of art, he dipped it into the black acrylics, and brought it up to the canvas.

Don’t shake the hands of fate.
Burn the evidence.
Burn the evidence.
There’s no more time to waste.


He attacked the artwork with lettering and stepped back, feeling a bit of the emptiness that had plagued him for months on end ebb away.

For written across the painting read three words:

KEEP THE FAITH.